This Tumbling World
by Always A Dragon
Summary: Two hearts. One is broken by grief, another by fear. Two people. One is a mother affected by death, another has been driven to insanity. A short tale of how a muggle and a death-eater exchanged a few words.


**Drabble:**

**Writing School Challenge for the IWSC**

**Title: This Tumbling World**

**School and Year: Hogwarts, year 6**

**Wordcount: 939**

**Technique: Start with action**

**Prompt: Formidable**

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**A/N: I wanted to write a story focused on how the first Wizarding War impacted on the muggles. Imagine this: Death Eaters turn up at a school, brutally murdering countless muggle children (for no particular reason). The English Authorities have no idea what's happening, and have called in the parents to identify the bodies. Meanwhile, an unnamed Death Eater, who is already half crazy, completely paranoid, and severely regretting joining Voldemort's inner circle (because of the pressure he's under), is now worried and scared and realises that he just killed people. He stays behind, hiding, watching as muggles appear at the crime scene.**

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No. No. This can't be happening. Emilia Mason's fingers scrabble at those closed eyelids, those tiny grey lips. She presses her hands to a pale neck, searching for a heartbeat that isn't there. No. Impossible. She clutches at those very small hands; wrings them backwards and forwards, hoping, hoping, hoping. Shock settles into her soul, the numbness spreading from her heart to head.

No.

Fingertips search for a breath, ears listen for the tell-tale sound of air passing through lungs. There is nothing.

No.

Emilia Mason can't believe it. She won't believe it. This, this _corpse, _this pale and lifeless thing- surely it can't be- it can't be her son.

No.

No, No, No.

Maybe he'll just walk out of the school, grinning in his usual cheerful way. His five-year old fingers grasping some piece of artwork he'd made that day.

No one appears.

Emilia stands up, the world spinning around her. Is she drunk? Is she sick? The pavement tips under her feet; the grey sky above her shatters into pieces like glass. Emilia grabs her elbows, uncertain of where she is or what she's doing. Voices shout meaningless questions. Who did this? How did they do this? Why did they do this?

As the world tumbles over itself, Emilia Mason spies an alley. A twisty, windy alley. It looks forbidding. Formidable, even. Formidable, forbidding. What was the difference again?

She stumbles drunkenly towards it, away from the body-who-isn't-her-son, away from the tiny stick-figures lined out on the cracked pavement. This darkness is almost inviting. Maybe she'll find her son there, his luminous smile lighting up the world.

She doesn't find her son.

She finds a man.

She thinks it's a man, anyway. He has a hooded cloak, a black mask and long voluminous robes on. It looks as though he has no face. It looks as though he is part of the shadows. He has an aura about him. Strange, scary and formidable. Like the alley. Emilia can tell he isn't supposed to be there.

_Who are you?_

Emilia doesn't realise she has said anything until the man answers.

"I don't know." His voice is deep and has an accent. If Emilia was in a better state of mind, she'd know what it was. But she isn't. She's in an alleyway and her son isn't here. The air is cold.

"What are you doing here?"

The stones in the alley are smooth to the touch, like the pale skin of the boy-who-isn't-her-son. The man doesn't answer for a while.

"I had power."

Pause.

"I had power and I loved it. I thought that was all there was to life. Power. Power and glory."

Emilia doesn't say anything. The man is wrapped up in his thoughts and she in hers.

"I thought that was all to life. Then I realised that I had gotten too far in. Couldn't back out now. Dug myself into too deep a hole."

Emilia thinks of graves and shovels. She thinks of eyes that never open and lungs that never breathe.

"I've seen lives lost. I've seen people die. I've seen the emptiness in their eyes."

"I've seen that too." Emilia says, finally adding her voice to the conversation. Suddenly the tiny bodies behind her seem very real. The man-without-a-face shrinks into the shadows, barely visible.

Emilia wonders if he's even real. She wonders if he's only visible to her, just some figment of her imagination. She wonders if she's in a nightmare.

The world stops spinning and Emilia feels less drunk. She can feel the cold air more clearly now. Her fingers brush against the smooth cotton of her dress, remembering someone who once told that cotton "breathes". How is it that cotton is alive and the boy-who-certainly-isn't her-son doesn't draw breath?

Closed eyes.

Pale skin.

Grey lips.

Two mad people stand in an alley, encompassed by darkness, their hearts broken by grief and fear.

No one knows how long they stand there because no one notices them.

The sky grows darker.

Emilia opens her mouth, feeling two simple questions grow inside her.

They are the questions everyone asks when they see dead bodies. They are the questions everyone wonders as they brush back strands of hair from dead children's faces.

"What happened? Who killed them?" Emilia says softly.

Two simple questions.

The answers are more complicated, though.

The man with no face fixes his eyes on hers. Underneath the mask, his lips curl into a grin. He seems much less mad and more insane. All feeling of drunkenness leaves Emilia. She is afraid of this formidable, forbidding man. She is in an alley, in the dark, her son isn't there and it doesn't feel all that good an idea right now.

The man takes some kind of wooden stick out of his pocket and shoots a red flare into the air with a bang. Emilia doesn't know how he does this and she doesn't really care.

"The people who did this," The man whispers awfully, "are the people who wear these masks. They gave me power. They gave me a life."

His eyes turn suddenly fearful again. Emilia steps back, feeling the lifeless stone wall behind her slide underneath her fingers.

Three words. The man says three words.

"They are coming."

Emilia feels a chill run down her spine.

A split-second after, three things happen.

The man disappears in a rush of smoke and shadow, leaving Emilia wondering if she really was drunk after all.

Several people in masks and robes appear on the pavement next to the stick-figure-bodies.

Lastly, the world explodes in a blast of colour, sound and riot.


End file.
